


A Place Among the Stars

by Euregatto



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 01:32:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12877338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: A rewrite and revamp of "Growing Roses with Poison" -Carly remembers her days as a Dark Signer, just as the rest of the world remembers how the Five Dragons descended to save them all from Hell - but the evil of the Earthbound Immortal isn’t quite gone. And Jack soon realizes, if he can’t help the one person he cares about most, he might have to lose her all over again.





	A Place Among the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> A rewrite and revamp, because I have a bunch of different, better ideas and have honestly always wanted to finish GRWP so why not?

 

“Rise and shine, Jack.”

There is darkness judging him from above and evil grasping at him from below. Her hands give him a sense of familiarity, keeping him grounded as the tower shifts when the continents collide from somewhere over the burning horizon. When he dares to open his eyes he finds the same stone ceiling, the same marked walls, the same Hell. He’s here again for the fourth or fifth or fifteenth time, hallucinating that he’s in a world of crumbling skies and earthen fire and he’s the King of all its desolation.

He barely recollects how long he’s been trapped, if he really is trapped. Who’s to say this isn’t real anymore? He can’t tell. His nightmares have merged with his reality, his dreams have been ripped open at the seams to release their destruction. And this girl, at his side – she spits lies through her teeth and masks them with gentle smiles that resonate Carly but are borderline demonic. Her black sclera gloss over with falsified emotions, layers of desire and lust and hate and despair, collapsing into her pupils, swallowing up what little remains of the woman he loves.

Carly and Misery, they’re one in the same now. The line dividing them has been ripped away by that Immortal deity.

“Isn’t this simply wonderful?” she purrs into the base of his neck, entwining their bare legs, pressing her chest into his arm. She digs her blunt nails into his ribs, earning a hiss when blood draws up to the surface of his punctured flesh. “Just you and me. We have this world, we have all the ruin and the chaos at our every command... and those ghouls worship you, Jack. They worship their _King.”_

A shiver rides up his spine. He clutches the sheet beneath him to keep himself steady, to breathe in. Breathe. _Just breathe_.

Misery mounts him when he doesn’t answer her. She kisses him, tastes like ash and rot and ice, but he can’t help himself and meets her for every tantalizing movement. His hands have already made themselves comfortable on either side of her neck, one thumb against the base of her throat, the other pressed to her quickened pulse. From this angle, if he really, _really_ wants to, he can snap her neck.

“You won’t hurt me,” she hisses into his ear, trailing kisses down his jaw. One arm snakes under the sheet, nails sensually scraping his skin. “You don’t want to harm Carly. You don’t want to be alone _again_ , do you?”

He gasps when her firm grasp finds what she’s looking for. “This isn’t real,” he utters, clutching her throat, not tightly but surely. “As much I’d like it, you wouldn’t die.”

“Mm, you’re hoping to escape from this.” She strokes him to life, weaving her fingers into his golden locks and tugging, hard, so his head snaps back and exposes his throbbing veins. “You can escape any time you want to, Jack. _I’m_ not the one keeping you here.”

“That’s another lie.”

“That’s the truth.” She settles easily onto him, bringing both hands back to anchor into his sides. “You can leave when you want. I’ve already tormented you to my liking – and you’ve figured out this is just a trick. So what’s stopping you, Jack, hm? What’s”—she rolls her hips—“stopping”—he gasps, thrusting up to meet her _—“you?”_

“I just want my Carly back,” he says finally, hands dropping down to Misery’s waist in defeat. In reluctant submission. She’s won, _she always wins_.

The demon chuckles as he breaks for the umpteenth time this cycle, gives in to the nightmare again and again and again. “I’m sorry Jack,” she whispers, but her quiet voice fills the musky air with the intensity of a roaring engine, “you’re not strong enough to save her. You never were.”

And he believes her.

  

* * *

 

 

Carly awakens with a start. Her mind blends between one memory and the next, her stomach coiled as if she’s missed a step. And perhaps she has missed something – uncharacteristic for a reporter like her, a journalist who needs to focus on the details because a misplaced word, a skipped step, reminds her suddenly of the time when she played jump rope at the orphanage.

For several moments her vision remains smeared. As if she’s observing the world through a kaleidoscope. Hands grip her shoulders firmly, steadying her as she attempts to sit upright, and her head throbs where she thinks she hit it after falling from her bike.

“Carly, how are you feeling?”

“Misty?” she mutters. A hand touches her cheek to keep her focused forward. “Agony?”

“No, it’s just me,” Misty says. “We’re safe now. Are you okay, Carly?”

Carly suddenly remembers to breathe. “Yes, I’m…I can’t see you. Where are my glasses?”

Misty turns to address someone Carly can’t see. There’s no way to tell who’s here, how many people are alive, if the world is safe or in ruin. “Does anyone have Carly’s glasses?”

“None of us have seen them,” a deep voice replies.

“Jack has them,” Carly says quickly, suddenly remembering more than just how to breathe. A dragon of bright crimson starlight, a bird that smells of sulfur and rot. She attempts to get up from the ground but her legs hurt, her entire body feels like it’s burning. “Where is he?”

Misty anchors her in place. “Don’t move, you’re still adjusting.”

“Misty, is Jack alive?”

“Yes,” she says reassuringly, and Carly exhales. “The signers won. We’re free.”

Carly leans against Misty, sighing. “Are the others okay? Yusei? Bommer?”

“They’re fine. We’re all going to be fine.” Misty is one of the few people who answers all of Carly’s questions, but all the same, Carly decides to go quiet before she works herself up. Eventually Misty props Carly against her shoulder. “Take your time adjusting, you were unconscious were for a long while.”

“I have to thank Jack when he gets here.”

“What for?” Misty asks quizzically.

Carly smiles, and clutches her forearm where her mark used to be seared into her flesh like a scar.

“For putting me out of my misery.”

  

* * *

 

 

Jack tears down the streets of Neo Domino City with the wind under his wheels and his heart suspended in his chest. Yusei and Crow are somewhere to his right but his mind isn’t on them right now. Their friends were waiting for them at the other end of the city, Aki and Lua and Luca and the Dark Signers, resurrected –

_Carly…_

Aki had called them from the central park overlooking the city when Majestic Star Dragon descended from the sunlight and left them on the stoop of the city. “They’re alive,” she had said, her smile wide and welcoming on Yusei’s screen. “The others are alive.”

Jack’s chest is swelling with some sort of confliction he hasn’t felt since he first fell from grace. _Carly is alive – but does she remember everything? Does she remember being Misery? Does she remember…does she know what we did?_

“Jack,” Yusei says over the rush of air between their bikes. “Jack, calm down. There’s no danger here.”

“It’s not that,” he snaps back. He doesn’t mean to raise his voice yet even Crow is looking at him now. Concern. Curiosity.

“Is it Kiryu?” Crow inquires.

Jack has his eyes fixated on the road ahead of them. “It’s a lot of things,” he replies, pulling ahead. “I can’t afford to slow down.”

They cross into the park. Under the fluorescent lights they see Aki with the twins who wave them over, Mikage and Ushio and Bommer, but Kiryu is gone and there’s Misty – Jack’s stomach drops when he sees Carly, standing with her shoulder to Misty’s, her gaze unfocused, unable to focus –

“Yusei! Jack! Crow!” Lua and Luca call.

“Lua! Luca!” Yusei exclaims, pulling up and barely managing to kick out his bike’s stand before he embraces them both.

Aki accepts Crow’s worried hug. “Where’s Kiryu?” he asks when he pulls back.

“He left when we weren’t looking,” she replies with a frown. “Are you guys alright?”

“We’re fine,” Yusei says, rising back to his feet as the twins finally let him go. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”

Jack dismounts his bike. He thinks he hears Mikage say something to him but his head is suddenly heavy. Removing the helmet doesn’t alleviate the pain. Carly must have heard his voice too, she’s smiling but she isn’t able to locate him, instead her eyes remain turned to Misty, muttering incoherent questions in her excitement.

_You’re not strong enough to save her. You never were._

The nightmare replays in Jack’s mind from beginning to end, again, again, rewinding when he thinks he could have heard Carly’s voice crying his name, fast-forwarding through the parts where the demon breaks him like a glass menagerie. Is it really a nightmare when he had to experience that, had to suffer through two Hells at once before he could muster enough strength to break her curse?

_When did I allow myself to become so weak?_

“Jack?” Carly says with peaked curiosity. Waiting. Anticipating and his pulse is racing, his heart wants to slam its way out from his chest like a sledgehammer.

He approaches her as if his feet weren’t begging him to stop. Was it shame, then?

His fingers clutch the broken trifocal glasses in his inside breast pocket. He feels his body moving on its own, every pulse of relief and intensity alternating between a heartbeat and a breath. She lets him slide on her glasses, her eyes adjusting quickly to her prescriptions.

_Breathe._

_Just breathe._

Carly smiles. “Jack,” she says and his hands find their way to her face, gripping her cheeks, his fingers desperate against her mortal flesh. If he lets go, he might lose her all over again. “My wonderful Jack…I was rooting for you.”

He feels his chest swell.

 

_Is this real?_

 

“Carly,” he responds with equal longing and then her arms are around his shoulders, his neck, pulling him in and he lets her, allows his arms to envelop her body and allows himself to press close so he can feel the thrumming of her heartbeat through her skin. His lips are on hers, he doesn’t know whether he was the one who made the move first or –

_Is any of this real?_

* * *

 

# Chapter 1

When Jack sees Carly again, it’s a few weeks later. His time is consumed in traversing the Daedalus Bridge, reassuming his role as King by propelling himself into his dueling with the force of a shooting star, and repairing the Satellite district with Yusei and Crow’s assistance. Carly resides in the back of his mind through every long duel and every restless night.

Like the rest of them, she’s gone back to her old life. The Dark Signer conspiracy was on the headlines for most of the last month – with much of the story first originating from Carly’s “first hand account” article that tweaked some personal detail but ultimately kept the identities of the Dark Signers entirely secret. She omitted some key information, to protect Misty and Bommer and Kiryu and herself, no doubt.

Jack still avoids those journalists like the plague, especially the ones who try to inquire that the threat was an international hoax. If Carly wants his opinion for her own piece she never asks him. He checks her site daily but she’s covering everything that isn’t him and isn’t the Dark Signer conspiracy now, as if she’s lost her momentum on the subject entirely.

One thing has become very clear to him, however: she remembers everything. They all do.

Jack enters Yusei’s flat after another unsuccessful attempt at finding a part-time job. He must have worried his friends because he slumps a little at the kitchen table, his gaze fixed intensely on the imperfect notch in the hardwood.

“Jack? You okay man?”

Jack stares at the table for several seconds more before the comment finally registers. He drags his eyes up to Crow sitting across from him, and then diverts them over to Yusei by the stove. “What was that?”

“Are you going to eat?” Yusei repeats, gesturing to the beef-and-rice he’s made.

“No, not right now.”

“How’d the interview go?”

The former King returns his gaze to the table before pushing up to his feet. “Fine. I have another interview in an hour so I have to go.”

“Another interview?” Crow retorts. “I figured every place in the city would have fired you by now.”

Jack snatches his coat off the chair and makes a swift exit from the Gear Mill, leaving Yusei and Crow to stare at his wake. “I’m definitely worried,” Yusei amends. “He hasn’t been himself since we returned from the Satellite. Should we do something?”

“Think it has anything to do with Carly?”

“Why?”

“She called me to ask why Jack isn’t answering her messages.”

“Let’s avoid getting involved,” Yusei decides, “at least until it seems like he really needs our advice. If I know Jack, he’ll work it out. He always does.”

Almost half a minute later, Jack returns with his jacket still thrown over his shoulder. Crow and Yusei watch him intently, waiting for him to speak. “I realized it’s Friday,” he says matter-of-factly, placing himself back in his previous seat. “My interview was on Wednesday.”

“Typical you,” Crow mutters under his breath.

As if summoned by the existence of bad luck itself, a familiar voice rings out from the front hall. “Crow! I got a package I need you to deliver for me!” Carly enters the kitchen a moment later with a sealed cardboard box in her arms, but as soon as she notices Jack, she freezes. He glances the other way so he doesn’t have to meet her stare. And just like that, the elephant is in the room and no one wants to mention it.

“A package?” Crow asks finally, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“From my boss,” Carly answers, setting it on the table. “I told him you had cheap rates so he wants you to bring this to some of our journalists covering a story on the construction of additional duel lanes down east.”

“Can do! I’m dropping off other packages at the east end anyway.”

“Awesome!” She rifles in her pockets and pulls out a check. “And he says this is your payment. That’s more than enough, right?”

Crow accepts the check and glances it over. “This is twice as much as I charge!”

“I may have lied about the rates.”

“You want something to eat?” Yusei offers, transferring the pot from the stove to the center tray on the table. “I’ve made plenty, you can help yourself.”

Carly waves her hands at him. “No thank you, Yusei! I ate already! And I’m a journalist, I can’t stay in one place for too long!” She quickly glances at Jack out of the corner of her eye. Again, the room falls into a thick silence that threatens to crumble under the tension. “Can we talk?” she starts carefully, as if testing the temperature of steaming water. He doesn’t acknowledge her statement, so she tries again, more forcefully this time.  “Jack. Jack, I want to talk. Please.”

Jack rises from his chair, taking up his jacket and throwing it over his shoulders. “Let’s take this somewhere private, then.”

Yusei and Crow watch them take their leave, keeping their distances from each other like avoiding the plague. When the door swings shut, Crow exhales his held breath. “Whew, that was like a soap opera.”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t end like one,” Yusei mumbles, pressing his palm to his forehead.

   

* * *

 

  

“Why haven’t you answered my calls, Jack?”

He’s staring at her. The garage is dismally, eerily reflective of the desolate wasteland he had last seen her in before the end of the world; a world of shadows with air as thick as tar. He wants to grasp her, to feel her in his arms again, but she’s standing out of his reach and his feet won’t fucking move.

“I’ve been busy making sense of things.”

Carly nods. Her arms are folded, she’s the opposite of tense but he feels like the tension between them is sucking the air out of the room. “Was it something I did?” she inquires, guarded.

“Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous!”

“You told me you loved me.”

He curls his fingers into tight fists that threaten to tear the fabric of his gloves. “I still do.”

“You don’t act like you do.”

His breath hitches. She’s never like this – raw with morose, as if sliding a scalpel down her chest and exposing her emotions to him in brutal, agonizing truth. He stares at her back, every wrinkle in the sleeves of her favorite shirt, every fade in the jacket and the carefully combed ends of her hair.

_Misery did this,_ he tells himself. Misery took a piece of her she still hasn’t managed to fit back into place.

“You don't get to say that.” When his voice cracks it fails him. She visibly stiffens. “I was hurt, I was so afraid that I had lost you and… and when I saw that you were alive… Carly, you _died_.”

She bites her lip, no longer as guarded and he can feel something crumbling between them. “Jack, listen, if you need some time, I can give that to you. You’ve got your fame back, Jack – all the girls you could ever want, all the fans and loving friends and…” She brings one arm up to clutch the other elbow. “I’ll give you your space.”

“What’s your point, Carly? That you’re going to walk out on me – on _us_ – because you think that I don’t – that I don’t-!”

“Love you, Jack? Is that what you’re struggling to say?”

She’s bitter and broken and he hates himself because he doesn’t like her this way – he just wanted Carly back, _his_ Carly, the Carly, one and only. And now that he has her she’s slipping out of his desperate grasp the same way she had the first time he lost her.

The second time he lost her.

_Not a third. Please, please not a third._

She bites back a sob, breathes. “I’m sorry if your feelings for me have changed, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore me. That doesn’t mean you have the right to act like I’m not here. I’ve already ceased to exist once before. I can’t take that again.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Then what _do_ you want, Jack?”

He finally moves, breathes. Steps towards her and his hands could touch her if he tried. “I didn’t know if I was ready for the future. I needed some space, some time, to think and reflect and decide. But I want to make it better between us. I want to make things _right_.”

“Don’t you understand, Jack?” she says, and the weight of the world caves down on his chest.

Jack notices her shaking, her violent quaking from her shoulders to her knees and how she’s dropped her head into her hands, discarded her stupid glasses to the floor because her eyes are burning and her voice tastes like rage and her oxygen is poisoning her lungs.

“I miss the power,” she whispers, both hands masking her face, bringing back the darkness still enveloped in her mind. “I miss being certain of myself, having people who viewed me as equals and never mistreated me. You don’t understand what it’s like Jack! You don’t understand what it’s like to be a no body with no friends and what it’s like to lose everything that made you finally feel on top of the world!”

Then, he moves. He envelops her, closing her in his arms. “But I do understand.”

She doesn’t attempt to shove him away but he holds her tighter all the same, against his chest, leaning down so his forehead is pressed to the side of her brow. He’s right, she knows it. He gets that feeling, he gets it. “But you don’t understand,” she tells him. “Jack, you don’t understand. I can _feel_ it. The darkness, the demon, it calls me and it still wants me. Without you I’m toppling and with you I’m crumbling. I don’t know what to do. Jack, please make this all stop, _please_ -”

“Tell me what you want,” he whispers. “Let me in, Carly. _Let me in.”_

She breaks. She hugs him close and collapses to the floor a heap of hysteria and screaming, choking on sobs and bringing him down to her level against the cold, unforgiving ground.

And he holds her.

He just holds her.

  

* * *

 

  

They’re at the desk across the room nearly twenty minutes later, seated side-by-side, his jacket draped over her shoulders. She has her recovered glasses lying next to her half-empty mug of tea, but she isn’t very interested in drinking the rest right now, and instead watches the steam grasp uselessly at the air. Her eyes burn. At the very least, she thinks that she’s gotten her anger out of her system – for now – even though a sense of despair accompanies the newfound emptiness in her chest.

It’s not like her to feel so much hatred, so much antipathy. For a minute, it was almost like she had become consumed by the Earthbound Immortal’s darkness again. _But it’s dead now_ , she tells herself _, it’s dead. And everything that’s happening is a side effect of coping without it._

“Let me stay with you.”

She reluctantly drags her weary eyes to Jack. He has his gaze fixated on the sunlight streaming through the thin windows above, and she almost feels guilty for blaming him for a series of events that were so far out of their control. That are now so far behind them. “You don’t have to. I’m going to be okay, Jack.”

“I’m sure you will,” he says. “You’re a strong person, and I believe you’ll get through it. But I want to stay with you for a while. Just a little while. Like we did before. I’ll even pay sixty-percent of the bill.”

“Jack…”

“Carly.”

She giggles suddenly, filling him with a renewed sense of hope. “Okay, I can’t possibly say no to the great Jack Atlas. This will be so exciting! I can get interviews with you all the time and I’ll finally make it in the world as a real journalist! Maybe I’ll even be the best there is!” She swallows the last of her tea, sets the empty mug down again, and exhales a sigh of relief. “But, you need a job. A real job. That you can keep.”

He nods. “Of course.”

She flashes him a smile that could light a sun before betraying her physical happiness with a despondent sigh. “I’m sorry about my outburst.”

“I’m sorry I went about trying to protect you the wrong way. Again.” He stares down at her intently. “So, you really remember _everything_ , about what happened.”

“Yes.”

“So then you remember… what we did. What happened… you know.”

“Yes.” She turns away to hide her blush. “I… I wasn’t exactly _not_ in control at that point. It happens to the best of us – okay, well, it’s not every day someone gets shoved out a window and reborn as a demon queen, but I digress.”

His gaze is intense, and empathetic. “So you knew what was happening.”

“Y-Yeah, I did. Maybe I should wash this!”

Jack stands as she does. She sets the jacket down on the chair, briskly taking her mug over to the sink to rinse it and place it up on the counter. When she returns to him, he’s still poised, watching her carefully and silently.

“Is there something on my face?” she questions, touching the points of her lips.

“No, it’s just… you made it over there without your glasses.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right,” she says, forcing a smile. “I dunno, after the whole signer fiasco, my eyesight has been coming and going.” She gazes down at her hand, how it fades out into a blur at first, but then transfixes, clear as the summer sky.

He gently takes both sides of her face, tilting her up and leaning down to level the height distance, gently brushing chapped lips against hers. “I really thought I had lost you, Carly. And that pain was almost unbearable.”

“You kissed me.”

“I did.”

“And then you ignored me.”

“I’m sorry.”

It’s coming back to her – she can tell now. She feels it. That spark, the way the darkness cleaves a knife through the light and how the light bends around the blade. Endless and untouchable and consuming her raw. “Jack… you’re not one for apologizing.”

“But I have to. Just this once. I’m sorry I let you slip away from me, but this time, I won’t ever let you go again.”

She welcomes his kiss, familiar to her after the first time this happened in that hellish world defined by chaos and ruin. How he welcomed her insanity, embraced her shattered sanity, pieced her together and made her whole for only that one, single, brief, brief moment. How he swiftly lifted her onto the table top, the way he’s doing now, by her thigh and hip, effortless, enthralling.

Gently kissed his way down her neck, moaning as she teased her fingers through his hair and clutched the back of his skull, tightening her grip when he found that sweet spot at her pulse point, and sucked, just like that –

She cries out and slams back down into reality. He’s back to feverishly kissing her, helping her shrug off the vest, and her hands are trembling at his waistline, clumsily working at undoing his belt, zipping down the fly with an imperative tug.

It’s familiar to her, these movements. She suddenly doesn’t feel shy, or self-conscious or anxious – as if a hidden, deeper part of her is consuming her sanity and taking control of the reigns.

She wraps her legs around his waist, letting him shove her down on her back with both hands pinned over her head. He forces up her shirt, relocating those sweet spots of hers on the pallid expanse of flesh directly above her naval, and sucks her exposed skin. She groans, squirming, working at the clasp of her own bra as he softens her up with his tender caresses.

Carly wouldn’t have been the one to like it this rough, this impatient, but she’s done it as Misery and all she knows now is that she _needs_ it and she needs _him_ and she needs to _know_ that she’s still herself, that she’s still the Carly Jack really loves.

He trails his kisses up to the center of her chest, pinning her arms over her head again. This time she leaves them and lets him dominate her, removing the bra himself and tossing it somewhere aside, exposing her breasts to the open air. He strokes them gently, kisses the inner skin, working slowly this time as she toes off her shoes and exhales a sigh of his name.

It drives him _wild_.

He swallows one of her perked nipples, utilizing both hands to pin her waist down when she cries out, grabbing one edge of the table and the locks of his hair, bucking with a surge of pleasure. She recalls being sensitive and he clearly remembers himself, because he abuses her bud, sucks her hard and switches between them just when the other is getting too sore.

Something hot and wet and alive is heating up between her legs. She’d close them if it wasn’t for his intrusive waist, and all she can think to do is utter his name. “Jack – Jack, _please_ ”—her voice is borderline cracking under the pressure—“I _need_ -“

“Carly.”

She melts, relaxing under the heat of his voice against her chest. He unbuttons her jeans and his fingers trace the apex of her hips, tantalizing, leaving little pinpricks of heat wherever he touches. His hand slides down, fingertips caressing the bud of her womanhood. When she moans, it’s the hottest sound he’s ever heard.

Almost immediately, the door above the stairwell swings open. Jack reflexively snatches up his jacket and throws it over Carly’s exposed body, and has no means of hiding his uncomfortable erection when Ushio appears on the platform.

“Son of a Satellite-” He slaps his hands over his eyes. “You could’ve locked the door!”

“You should’ve knocked,” Jack snaps back. “Why don’t you let us get decent?”

The officer parts his fingers, and after realizing that Carly is tucked under the protective jacket, gaze averted bashfully to the floor, he decides to drop his arms. “Did you at least use protection?”

“What does protection matter?” Jack questions skeptically. “Neither of us has any diseases.”

“Haven’t you heard of pregnancy?”

Jack hesitates. “That’s how a woman gets pregnant?”

“Y-You didn’t know that?!” Carly retorts. “I didn’t even think of it! I’m not ready for babies yet!”

“Babies come from women?” Jack says in disbelief.

“Yes! Where did you think they came from?!”

“Capsules.”

“What?!”

“That’s where Yusei came from. And Crow came out of a trash can the day we found him.”

Ushio and Carly stare at Jack for several prolonged moments before the former duelist faces the door. “I need to reflect on my life choices,” he says, shaking his head. “You two should come out when you’re dressed.”

Jack watches the older man leave before furrowing his brow. “Sounds serious.”

“ _That_ sounds serious, but a baby doesn’t?”

“Can’t we just have Martha take care of it? What parents take care of children?”

“Normal ones, Jack.”

“Well I don’t want to be a normal parent.”

Carly presses her palm to her forehead. “Never mind, let’s just hurry.”

 


End file.
